Talk pages are a key feature of Wikipedia, offering the ability to discuss articles and other issues with other Wikipedians. They are not to be used as a chat room, soapbox, battleground or for general discussion of the article topic.

If you have a question, concern or comment related to improving an article put a note in the article's talk page and not in the article itself. You do that by clicking the "discussion" tab at the top of the page. Do not worry if the link shows up in red; it is all right to create the talk page if it does not already exist.

If you are responding to someone else's remarks, put your comment below theirs. You should indent it properly (see section below). If you're not responding to someone else, but are posting about something new, use the "New section" tab at the top of the talk page to create a new section, which automatically goes at the bottom of the page.

You should always sign your comments by typing ~~~~ for your username plus a time signature. Then, when you click "Save page", your signature will be inserted automatically. Otherwise your posting will still appear but without your name. (For your convenience, there is a button at the top of the edit box with a signature icon which inserts "--~~~~" when clicked.)

If you do not have a username account, or if you have one but have not logged in, your computer's external IP address will be used instead as your signature, when you type ~~~~ and save your edit. And in such cases, whether or not you sign your comment, your IP address will be recorded (in the page history) as having made the edit. If you don't want your IP address recorded by Wikipedia in a way that everyone can see it, then you should get a username by creating a free account.

User talk pages

Every editor (every person with a username) has a user talk page on which other contributors can leave messages. This includes contributors who have not created an account. If someone has left you a message, you will see a note across the top of Wikipedia pages (if you're signed in) saying "You have new messages", with a link to your user talk page.

You can reply in either of two ways. One is to put a message on the user talk page of the person you are replying to. The other is to put your reply on your own talk page beneath the original message. Both are common on Wikipedia; however, be aware that replying on your own talk page runs the risk that your reply won't be seen, if the user does not look at your talk page again. If you intend to use this approach, it is a good idea to post a notice to that effect, at the top of your talk page, so people know they have to keep an eye on the page to see your response, rather than getting your response on their page.

Indenting

Indenting can improve the layout of a discussion considerably, making it much easier to read. A standard practice is to indent your reply one level deeper than the person you are replying to.

There are several ways of indenting in Wikipedia:

Plain indentations

The simplest way of indenting is to place a colon (:) at the beginning of a line. The more colons you put, the further indented the text will be. A newline (pressing Enter or Return) marks the end of the indented paragraph.

For example:

This is aligned all the way to the left.

: This is indented slightly.

:: This is indented more.

is shown as:

This is aligned all the way to the left.

This is indented slightly.

This is indented more.

Bullet points

You can also indent using bullets, which are also used for lists. To insert a bullet (when your edit is saved), type an asterisk (*). Similar to indentation, more asterisks in front of a paragraph means more indentation.

A brief example:

* First list item

* Second list item

** Sub-list item under second

* Third list item

Which is shown as:

First list item

Second list item

Sub-list item under second

Third list item

Numbered items

You can also create numbered lists. For this, use the number sign or "octothorpe" (#). This is usually used for polls and voting, and otherwise is fairly rare. Again, you can affect the indent of the number by the number of #s you use.

Example:

# First item

# Second item

## Sub-item under second item

# Third item

Shows up as:

First item

Second item

Sub-item under second item

Third item

Example discussion

Here is an example of a well-formatted discussion:

Hi. I have a question about this article. I'm pretty sure purple elephants only live in New York! JayRandumWikiUser 02:49, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Well, last time I was in New York, the elephants I saw were green. — try2BEEhelpful 17:28, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Experiment

Experiment! This time, instead of editing a sandbox, leave a message on the talk page by clicking "Discuss this page" or "Discussion". Remember to sign your user name. You might want to try responding to someone else's post. Remember, you should use "Show preview" to see if your formatting works before you save.

Other project pages

In addition to Talk pages, there are some other categories of behind-the-scenes pages that help Wikipedians communicate with each other, and serve a variety of other roles in building Wikipedia. These different areas are often referred to as namespaces — as in, "the Talk namespace".

Pages in the Wikipedia namespace (also known as the "Project namespace") provide information about Wikipedia and how to use it.

Content written in a Template page will be displayed in articles that contain the corresponding template reference. For example, the content written in Template:Pp-protected will appear in any article that contains the {{pp-protected}} tag. Take a look at Wikipedia:Template messages to see what templates have already been created. You can use the corresponding tags in articles. You can also create new templates.